Sumith Prasad
The fifth episode of FX’s crime drama series ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’ depicts the strengthening companionship between Aaron Hernandez and Chris Taylor, a trainer and physical therapist who helps the football player become fit after he joins Brian Murphy’s management firm, Athletes First. Their therapy sessions gradually become intense and intimate, paving the way for the birth of a sexual relationship. Chris remains a secret part of the tight end’s life even after the latter starts living with his partner, Shayanna Jenkins. This hidden companionship nearly gets exposed when his girlfriend asks Aaron whether he is having an affair with someone else. In reality, the football player’s intimate life was a well-guarded secret.
Chris Taylor is a Fictional Character Created to Explore Aaron Hernandez’s Sexuality
Chris Taylor does not have an exact real-life counterpart. Even though Aaron Hernandez was a client of Athletes First’s CEO Brian Murphy, there isn’t any evidence to prove that the football player had a sexual relationship with an employee of the management firm. The NFL star never discussed his sexual orientation or romantic/casual companionships with men, if they existed, publicly. Although his brother, DJ Hernandez, revealed that he came out as gay to their mother, Terri Hernandez, Aaron didn’t identify himself as one to the world. Therefore, the same-sex relationships he possibly had were always under wraps.
Through the fictional character Chris, Stuart Zicherman, who created the series, explores this possibility. The physical therapist/trainer is presented as a representative of men who might have been part of Aaron’s sexual/romantic life after he left Bristol, Connecticut, to become a football player. From a creative standpoint, the tight end’s relationship with Chris enabled Zicherman to delve into the pressure of possibly having a dual life as a gay man in a highly homophobic society. In the crime drama, Aaron doesn’t hesitate to flaunt his relationship with Shayanna Jenkins to fit in, which gives him enough time and emotional space to understand his feelings toward men.
“He [Aaron] had a really strong love for Shayanna, and he built a family with her. Maybe he felt more authentic in certain relationships with men, but I think he was figuring it out,” Zicherman told NBC News. “I don’t think people know how many secrets he had, and to live with the pressure of that must’ve been unbearable while trying to put up a public persona,” the creator added, clarifying the significance of the fictional Chris.
Aaron Hernandez and Chris Taylor’s Fictional Relationship Sheds Light on the Homophobia Around Them
In ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez,’ Aaron Hernandez tries his best to hide his relationship with Chris Taylor. He panics when Shayanna Jenkins confronts him about the possibility of him having an affair and lies to her to conceal this particular part of his life from her. His fear of the world finding out about his same-sex relationship is born when he starts nurturing an intimate companionship with his high school teammate, Dennis SanSoucie. Through Chris, the series establishes that this fear continues to affect him even after he becomes an NFL player. In reality, George Leontire, an attorney who was part of the tight end’s legal team, allegedly was aware of this struggle.
Leontire told the New York Post that Aaron was a gay man who “acknowledged the immense pain that it caused him.” Stuart Zicherman and his writers relied on Chris to explore this suffering that allegedly troubled the football player even after he became a star tight end. The show uses both Dennis SanSoucie and the fictional physical therapist as the gateways into Aaron’s life as an alleged gay man. While the former is based on a real high school teammate who claimed that he had a same-sex relationship with the tight end when they were teenagers, nobody resembling the latter has come forward to allege that he had sexual encounters with the NFL star.
The other alleged lover of Aaron Hernandez is Kyle Kennedy, who claimed that he definitely had a relationship with the football player that was beyond physical while appearing on the REELZ special ‘Aaron Hernandez: Jailhouse Lover Tells All.’ However, he was the tight end’s fellow inmate after the latter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing Odin Lloyd. He does not resemble Chris because he was never part of Aaron’s NFL period and showed up in the latter’s life after they become prisoners in the same facility.
Read More: Robert “Bobby” Valentine: How Did Aaron Hernandez’s Uncle Die?
